


The Second Love

by amyfortuna



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Kissing, M/M, Memories, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 23:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4038715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexios pines for Cunorix. Hilarion pines for Alexios.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chantefable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/gifts).



The poets often sing of the bright beauty and glory of love that strikes once and proves ever true, of how nothing can ever compare or be measured against that. It somewhat leaves in the cold those of us who fail in our first throw of the dice at Cupid's game, for whatever reason. The love may be unrequited, and that is a grief. The love may be frowned upon, and that is cause for sorrow. The love may be impossible, because between you and your beloved lies blood, and that is surely the cause for great mourning. 

Blood lay between us, separating Cunorix from me. We knew our desires and had held back - or rather, he held back where I would have pressed eagerly onward, would have taken him to my table and to my bed that night I gained my wolfskin, and we both knew it. But even as he made his excuses and departed, there was a look in his eyes as he glanced back at me, and there was something - not quite - of a promise of desire in them. And yet the days passed and he said no word of it. 

He became the Chieftain, and the promise was still there in his eyes as our hands came together, and I wished him good hunting on the new trail. And his eyes were bright as he told me that before long, we should be hunting on the old trails as before. There was something in his voice that made me hope it would not be only as before, lingering there. 

It was not to be. Even as we fought, dancing carefully with each other at first, our swords clashing together from time to time, I watched his eyes, as I remembered being told to do. The last of that promise had flickered out and they were now steel-hard, determined, cold, a stranger's eyes. 

Our final embrace was death and blood, pouring, unyielding darkness as my sword pierced his breast. I am glad that I remember it little; I would not have wanted to see his eyes as the light in them died. 

And so my first love was dead, and that which lay between us did not give me any room for warmth. I scrambled, in my mind, for the brighter memories, the hunt, talking of beautiful horses (and less than beautiful riders), the look of him as he came out of the Long Moss, but all my memories of him led back to grief. 

I thought that my heart had died forever, then. Inside I was the same as I had been in those days after Abusina, numb and cold, barely feeling at all. 

And yet there was Hilarion, bringing me bowls of broth and feeding them to me, like I was a child. My heart melted somehow at the way he looked at me and I allowed it. My memories began to creep back again, but these were different memories, happier ones, without any shadow of blood and death on them. 

\-----

I remembered Hilarion dragging me out of the Sinister gate, less than a month after I arrived. 

"The moon over the estuary on the sands at low water," he said to me eagerly, "you must see it." His hands gestured eloquently, losing their usual lassitude. His face was alive and keen. He put out a hand, almost as if he would take mine, but then drew back. I had already learned to read him a little, and was amused to find him so eager to show me the moon, as if I had never seen it before. 

We walked out of the fort together, quickly covering the short distance down to the water. It was late and growing chill with the approaching winter, but not very cold, not yet. 

He led me out onto the sands of the estuary, a long way out into the darkness, until the lights from Castellum were hardly visible behind the trees. It was so quiet, with just the calm lapping of the water in the still dark. There were no birds this far out, where water would shortly be rising. 

We did not stand still, but walked about, both for warmth and to avoid sinking in the soft wet sand. We were quiet, a comfortable silence settling between us, the same silence that fell when he sat with me, there as I recovered. 

After a few moments, the moon began to rise, huge against the water, wavering as it was echoed in the river. Around us frogs began to croak their night music, and I caught my breath. It was beautiful - the yellowed, huge, face, the black water reflecting it as it slowly pushed itself up from the horizon and revealed the shoreline, dark and dim. The light caught on the sands, turning them to silver, and Hilarion turned toward me, a smile spreading across his face to see the expression on mine. 

We looked at each other, and I said nothing. There was no need for words, just then. 

We remained until the water was coming back, a little too close for comfort, then we retreated back to the fort, pausing along the way to watch the moon rise ever higher in the darkness. Several times I thought I saw Hilarion give me a shadow of a smile that yearned - now in hindsight, having felt the same expression on my own face, I know that it was yearning - but said nothing of it. 

\-----

Then, too, there was the time, a bright morning in late summer, he managed to arrange it so that we went out riding together - ostensibly it was a hunt, but in truth it was little more than a pleasure journey, for we were not in need of anything then. We headed east across the ridges, until we came to the shores of a small lake. On the other side of the lake, a cliff-face rose, and there on the top of it were dwellings of stone, clearly battered by wind and rain. No one moved among them, and I gazed up, wondering who lived there, if any did at all. 

"If we skirt around this lake," Hilarion said, turning his horse south, "we can come up the long slope of the hill. It is a good point to look out over the land." He gestured at the buildings on the brow of the cliff. "Alauna, once a settlement of the Votadini. The hilltop is said to be haunted with strange voices, so none live there now." He gave me a mischievous smile. "Want to see if we can call them up?" 

I was unsure, but not about to show fear in front of anyone, least of all my senior centenarius, so I gave him a smile, as bright as I could make it. "Lead on," I said, and he smiled back with that wide grin of his. 

At the top of the hill, among the deserted buildings, we dismounted. There was an expanse of grass on the wide flat surface of the summit, so we turned the horses loose to graze and walked to the edge of the cliff, looking back westward over the countryside in the direction of Castellum, not quite visible due to the rise and fall of the land. Far below us, the lake shimmered and shone in the noonday sun. The large stone wall I found myself beside was warm from the sun; I propped myself against it, looking out north to the wide river and then west, toward Cunorix's lands. 

"It is a fair day, is it not?" Hilarion said from next to me. He had found himself a wall of his own to lean against and was lounging there as comfortable as if he were leaning against the wall of my office. He was not looking out at the land, but rather at my face, and that yearning smile was back on his lips. I carefully avoided his eyes, turning to look south, where clouds were rising from the hills there. 

"It is fair now," I said, "but it will not last."

He nodded. "We'll see the summer mist, that the Votadini call _haar_ , before long." He pushed himself away from the wall, reaching out for my hand. "But come, we wanted to see if we could find the voices that haunt this hilltop!" 

I did not particularly want to see, but took his hand anyway, allowing him to pull me across the open space between buildings. He was laughing, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, his sandy hair, grown just a little too long, falling in his eyes as the breeze caught it. He swept it back with his free hand, and turned toward me. 

We stopped in the middle of the open area, and he grinned at me, dropping my hand, about to say something dreadfully blasphemous, no doubt. I put a hand out, touched his arm. "There's no need to make the place angry," I said, feeling my way through the words. The whole deserted area had a feel of that like the black stone we daily touched, and I wanted to treat it respectfully. 

"Very well," he said, not perturbed at all, and I had the feeling of having passed some sort of test, but whether it was Hilarion's test or the place itself, I could not be sure. 

There was a large flat stone nearby, and he dropped down onto it lazily, tugging me after him. He sprawled out on the rock almost immediately, lying back on his elbows and looking up at the blue sky above us, while I tucked my arms around my knees and sat beside him. We were facing east now, looking out at the rise of the nearby ancient volcano and the cliffs that rose beside it. Seagulls and ducks danced in the shifting breezes, and a sharp-eyed hawk soared over our heads toward the ancient seat. 

The blue sky did not last terribly long; clouds crept in, and seemed to drift lower and lower down toward us. A chill breeze met us as the mist drifted over us, and within a few minutes we were in a mist so thick that I could no longer see our horses, grazing about a hundred feet away. Hilarion rose and called for them, after the manner of the Tribes. His voice echoed eerily among the hills and we looked at each other, both of us feeling a shivering chill running down our backs. 

"We should return," I said, and he nodded as the horses came toward us. We mounted swiftly and left the misty hilltop behind, clouds swirling in among the deserted houses, chilling the warm stone where we had been sitting. 

He leaned toward me, once we were well away. "Echoes on the wind, would you say, sir?" 

"Echoes from what voices, though?" I found myself saying.

"The voices of the dead!" he said, making his voice into a parody of Morvidd's breathless spooky tones, and we both laughed, looking at each other. A sense of relief flooded all through me to be away from there, and yet, I had enjoyed being there, under the blue sky with Hilarion by my side. 

\-----

Hilarion entered without knocking, and I looked up from my desk, a smile already beginning to cross my face. 

I could not resist the way I felt whenever I saw him, now, like the sun had come out from behind the clouds, dispelling all the mist. He was my loyal centenarius, my dear friend, and more than that. He was true to me in ways that Cunorix never could have been, was not capable of being, was not able to be. 

"Surely you've done enough for your first day back on active duty, sir?" he said. 

I laid the paperwork I had been reading down, and stood up. "Yes, I think you are right, Hilarion," I said, making my way out from behind the desk. He had been in the room less than twenty seconds and was already lounging against the wall by the door, one foot pressed back against it, a lazy fond smirk on his face. 

I came toward him, intending to open the door and head out, and could not say when my plans changed. Instead I found myself twining my arms around his neck, and leaning up to kiss him. I heard him gasp, and then his arms were around me, and he was kissing me in return, warm and tender. 

The poets often sing of the bright beauty and glory of love that strikes once and proves ever true, but the poets are fools, the lot of them. In Hilarion's arms, his smile wide as we looked at each other as though seeing each other for the first time, I happily condemned them all. 

My heart was no longer in the cold, for it was so for me that the second love was brightest, the most glorious, and so it has proved ever true.

**Author's Note:**

> Both of the places that Alexios and Hilarion visit are real places. 
> 
> The first one is the sands of Cramond, literally just a few minutes walk from the Roman fort that Rosemary Sutcliff set _Frontier Wolf_ in. It is a gorgeous sight by moonlight. 
> 
> The second one is the hill where Edinburgh Castle now is, with the landscape extrapolated from what I know it most likely would have looked like back then, long before any of the buildings we know existed. 
> 
> _Haar_ is one of my favourite words, and so useful for describing the cold sea fog that rolls in over Edinburgh during summer afternoons.


End file.
